Umami – The Fifth Taste

Ever wondered how ‘Indian Chinese’ cuisine overwhelmed India that now it is served in every corner of this country? Well the answer to it is that we Indians love ‘Umami’ taste.

- Shreya Rajwade

As kids we are taught about sweet, salty, bitter, sour as basic tastes. These tastes aren’t challenging to identify. But ‘Umami’, the fifth basic taste is slightly complicated to distinguish than the rest.

Some examples of food high in Umami are- Soy sauce, meat, fish, tomato, tomato ketchup, pizza, pasta, Indian curries (butter chicken, dal makhani, etc.) and many more. Umami taste is known to give a feeling of satisfaction, satiety after eating. Umami can truly be identified as the taste of ‘Yummy’!

It was a quite tough time for this taste to get scientific and social acceptance. Umami received scientific recognition in 1985, almost 77 years after it was first discovered by Kikunae Ikeda, who was a Japanese professor in 1908. The term ‘Umami’ comes from the Japanese adjective for delicious (umai). Even after getting recognition, umami was labelled as fifth basic taste in 2000 when an umami taste receptor of the brain was discovered.